8th straight – and maybe the last – Association of Health Care Journalists talk about HealthNewsReview.org

This week, for the 8th straight year, I’ll speak about the work of HealthNewsReview.org at an annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists – this one in Denver. For this one – as I’ve done in the last couple of such workshops – I’ll tag team with Ivan Oransky, MD, vice president and global editorial director of MedPage Today. (Thursday, 9 a.m., on the program.)

I don’t think anyone has spoken at this conference for 8 consecutive years on the same topic.

But this may be my last talk about the work of HealthNewsReview.org in this setting because we have been forced to abandon our systematic story reviews – once done by a team of more than 20 reviewers – due to a loss of funding.

I’ll certainly still consider invitations to speak based on the experience of my career, but the database of story reviews may stand as it is today, locked at 1,889 story reviews, because I don’t have the funding to pay the terrific team of reviewers that I once had. There are at least 1,889 lessons in those reviews – all available on the website – about how stories about health care interventions can be done well, and how they can be done so poorly that they may cause harm.

As I’ll ask in my talk, “Who will continue this kind of work?” – the work of independent health care news watchdog in an attempt to improve the public dialogue about health care.

Gary Fradin posted on April 2, 2014 at 10:48 am

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This story describes a small, ongoing study that touted lidocaine delivered to the back of the nasal cavity as an effective treatment for migraines. Although the story notes that the findings are preliminary, it does not inform us that the study wasn’t randomized or placebo-controlled; these are major drawbacks in interpreting the effectiveness of the procedure.

This story improves upon other recent Fox News efforts by including an independent expert perspective — the lack of which we commented on in a blog post about Fox News last week. But while our star score reflects that improvement, we still don’t think this story contributes very much to the public dialogue about health care. Our concerns are detailed in the review.

A study finds lower rates of gestational diabetes, but also more small babies, stillbirths, and newborn deaths in women who had bariatric surgery prior to their pregnancies compared with obese women who didn’t have surgery.